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Well, I'm learning olympiad inequalities, and most of the books go like this:

Memorize holder-cauchy-jensen-muirhead, then just dumbass (i.e bash and homogenize) and use the above theorems.

Needless to say, I feel extremely disintersted in inequalities for this approach.

What are some good books which makes inequality interesting ? (Not involving extremely elementary things like AM-GM, Cauchy, but more advanced like Jensen-Muirhead-Karamata-Schur also) ?


To give clarification what I consider as intersting as of now, the only inequality problem that I found interseting is that the following statement for positive reals

$\displaystyle \sum_{i=0}^{n}\frac{a_i}{a_{i-1}+a_{[i+1 \mod n}]} \leq \frac{1}{2}$

only holds for finitely many $n$. Also one thing that I find interesting is that the bounds which can't be analytically found, but exists.

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  • $\begingroup$ My first thought was Geometric Inequalities by Nicholas D. Kazarinoff AND An Introduction to Inequalities by Edwin F. Beckenbach and Richard E. Bellman AND Chapter 7 (pp. 161-204) in Problem-Solving Strategies by Arthur Engel, but these are fairly well known and the first two, while even suitable for strong undergraduate math students, might be a bit too soft for someone at the math olympiad level. $\endgroup$ Commented Nov 20, 2017 at 15:35

2 Answers 2

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Perhaps that you've already been exposed to it, but the great classical reference is Inequalities, by Hardy, Littlewood, and Pólya.

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  • $\begingroup$ Now, this book is very very outdated. $\endgroup$ Commented Nov 20, 2017 at 14:19
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Because for $a_i=1$ we have $$\frac{n+1}{2}\leq\frac{1}{2},$$ which is wrong sometimes.

I think, a best way to learn inequalities today it's to read books and papers of Vasile Cirtoaje.

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    $\begingroup$ How this is remotely related to the question ? $\endgroup$
    – katana_0
    Commented Nov 20, 2017 at 13:11
  • $\begingroup$ @Alex K Chen See please the inequality, which you posted. $\endgroup$ Commented Nov 20, 2017 at 14:25
  • $\begingroup$ Oops sorry I am on mobile will correct it later. (BTW, Are you arquady sir ? Thanks for the reference.) Is the books good for preparing for Olympiads (also exposes the interesting side of it ?) ? $\endgroup$
    – katana_0
    Commented Nov 20, 2017 at 14:56
  • $\begingroup$ Yes, I am arqady. I think these books they are the best way for preparing for Olympiads. Also you can read the forum "inequalities" in AoPS. $\endgroup$ Commented Nov 20, 2017 at 15:02

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